Petty things that start wars in every office

[GSNW]

I don't think eating at one's desk is an automatic issue unless, like someone said, you have a very strong-odorded lunch.  It reminds me of the episode of The Office where Pam is having sensitive nose issues due to pregnancy.  She asks Dwight not to eat hard boiled eggs at his desk, he refuses, so she barfs right into the trash can at her desk (in front of everyone).  Not a great solution but got a laugh for TV

[cicero]

I don't think eating at one's desk is an automatic issue unless, like someone said, you have a very strong-odorded lunch. It reminds me of the episode of The Office where Pam is having sensitive nose issues due to pregnancy.  She asks Dwight not to eat hard boiled eggs at his desk, he refuses, so she barfs right into the trash can at her desk (in front of everyone).  Not a great solution but got a laugh for TV

I agree. we don't have a place to eat lunch so we have to eat at our desks. we're considerate of each other, and don't bring fish (unless it's eaten cold) or raw onion etc.

[BarensMom]

The office fridge is a battleground waiting to happen, I agree.  I used to clean the office fridge and I would send out e-mails every day for a week, put signs on the break room and fridge door stating "the fridge will be emptied and removed for cleaning on Friday, xx/xx, after 3 p.m. - any items left will be dumped."  Of course, someone would always start screaming, "Where's my lunch, tupperware, salad dressing, etc." around 3:30 p.m.

Other battles were caused by people not refilling paper/toner into the shared printers/copier after they printed off the corporate equivalent of "War and Peace."

[Firecat]

I don't think eating at one's desk is an automatic issue unless, like someone said, you have a very strong-odorded lunch. It reminds me of the episode of The Office where Pam is having sensitive nose issues due to pregnancy.  She asks Dwight not to eat hard boiled eggs at his desk, he refuses, so she barfs right into the trash can at her desk (in front of everyone).  Not a great solution but got a laugh for TV

I agree. we don't have a place to eat lunch so we have to eat at our desks. we're considerate of each other, and don't bring fish (unless it's eaten cold) or raw onion etc.

A lot of people where I work eat at their desks, too. Some of us because we work through lunch, others because we use that time to check personal email and such (which is ok where I work, so long as it's not excessive or NSFW).

[SoCalVal]

I don't think eating at one's desk is an automatic issue unless, like someone said, you have a very strong-odorded lunch. It reminds me of the episode of The Office where Pam is having sensitive nose issues due to pregnancy.  She asks Dwight not to eat hard boiled eggs at his desk, he refuses, so she barfs right into the trash can at her desk (in front of everyone).  Not a great solution but got a laugh for TV

I agree. we don't have a place to eat lunch so we have to eat at our desks. we're considerate of each other, and don't bring fish (unless it's eaten cold) or raw onion etc.

A lot of people where I work eat at their desks, too. Some of us because we work through lunch, others because we use that time to check personal email and such (which is ok where I work, so long as it's not excessive or NSFW).

Funny, none of those items in the article would or have caused problems in my current office, and most of the things mentioned by posters are not a problem either.  I think the only issues we have (but not big enough to be "war-worthy") are the messy microwave.  No one burns popcorn, no one cares about strongly odored food and no one cares about eating at our desks.  Except for two people in my office, ALL of us eat at our desks on a regular basis (I work in a hospital and we don't have a break room so the options to eat elsewhere are really outside at concrete tables and benches or about a block away at the hospital cafeteria -- not worth the walk when most of us also bring our lunches).  However, we all have cubicles and face the wall so it would be a bit difficult for anyone to watch us eating.  A lot of us also often have strongly odored food from time to time so it wouldn't make sense for anyone to complain (only one person, Evil Coworker, tends to complain about anything, but the battles she creates are against me and since I now sit at the opposite end of the office separated by a long hallway, she isn't affected by me doing things that would infuriate her if I were near her, like eating at my desk or eating something with a strong scent -- only me, though; she wouldn't care if it were anyone else...and her bullying is why I now sit at a different end of the office and why I have a different supervisor).  I have to say I am blessed this time around with an office that gets along pretty well.

OTOH -- the commercial real estate brokerage where I worked years ago did have some fairly entitled brokers in it.  The receptionist (an almost always accommodating person) finally had enough of the dirty dishes one day and made a sign she posted above the sink stating everyone was responsible for washing their own dishes (the brokers kept leaving dirty lunch dishes and utensils in the sink).  It was never part of OUR jobs to wash THEIR dishes.

[Winterlight]

Funny and so true of every office I've ever worked for. But the author totally ignored the most controversial place of all -- the office fridge. Someone is always leaving their food to rot and stink up the whole floor, prompting someone to empty it all out... or the person who attempts to store a months worth of food in a fridge shared by 30 people... and then the food thieves!...  I can only assume the author is so traumatized by the office fridge that he can't even utter it's name. The humble refrigerator door is truly where the best passive aggressive notes appear.

Oh, dear heavens, the fridge. I've seen it cause civil insurrections in departments!

[andi]

At my one office the smoke detector was right outside the break room and went off at least once a week with one person's burned popcorn. We got fined by the fire Marshall because it was going off so often and popcorn was banned from the building (we had the microwaves taken out for a while )

[Dazi]

I think my offices number one war starter is the people doing number two in the bathrooms that are in the general office area vs the far better ventilated ones in the hall and then super spraying with even stinker air freshener...even after repeated reminders (true emergencies exempt of course).

Next would be the bathroom, kitchen, microwave, fridge dirtiers that just leave their mess.

People putting insulated lunch boxes in the fridge, taking up all the space so people who don't have monstrous lunch boxes can't find a place for their food.     This is one of my biggest peeves.  Insulated means the cold doesn't get in either, geniuses.  Tip:  if you want your lunch box to stay colder, store it open in your freezer and the put a blue ice that is the as close to the same size as your container on top of your food...it works splendidly.

Chair wars...or just supplies in general.

Lunch and break times, especially for offices that don't have a strict time policy.

[White Dragon]

Our current issue is the dishwasher, and I am admittedly probably the person most affected and thus annoyed.

Generally, people are really good about putting their stuff in the dishwasher and helping unload it.
My job is to make sure the dishwasher gets loaded and run as needed.

People have taken to trying to add items mid-cycle - which makes me wonder how clean they'll end up being. But the real issue is that they don't restart the machine after they interrupt the cycle.
Last Friday, I came in to find the machine had sat half done and full of dirty water overnight.
I restarted it.
Came back an hour later to empty it - only to find it stopped again.
I had no way of knowing just how clean it was, so I cancelled the cycle and started over.
Very frustrating!!

And now the big argument is whether or not we should let people put stuff in while the machine is running, or leave it in the sink.

[Amara]

Could there be an agreement that everyone thoroughly rinses and puts their dishes in the dishwasher but it isn't started until the end (or nearly the end--so it has time to end and be unloaded) of the workday?

[pixel dust]

There's also the people who leave dirty dishes in the sink. Forever.

My last office, this was a huge problem. It was a small, family-owned company. The owner had made it clear, many times, that she really didn't like finding dirty dishes in the sink every time she entered the kitchen. But there were several people on staff who would eat lunch, leave their dishes in the sink, and "take a break" later in the day to come back and wash them. Just a way to get out of doing 10 minutes of work. Or they forgot and didn't come back until the next day.

When we were moving to a new office building, we had the opportunity to put a dishwasher in the break room. But the owner decided that we "didn't deserve one," because of all the people who didn't wash their dishes promptly. It was such a little thing--just wash what you have dirtied.

We have this issue at my office too... But the main culprit is the owner. Luckily his wife also works there and she has no qualms about yelling at him about it.

[Sirius]

Where I used to work I had some highly coveted office supplies  - an electric stapler and probably the only decent-functioning two-hole punch in the place - because of the work I did.  I guarded them with my life.  They both had my name on them, and were only loaned to people who I knew would bring them back.  I also had some medical word books that I owned that were well labeled, and if people borrowed them and didn't put them back they'd lose their lending library privileges. 

This one was good, though:  We got a new NCOIC (the sergeant in charge.)  He wanted my space for his office, until I pointed out all the equipment I had that would have to be moved (special printer, modem, two computers, two file cabinets, my books.  I stayed where I was.

[SoCalVal]

This one was good, though:  We got a new NCOIC (the sergeant in charge.)  He wanted my space for his office, until I pointed out all the equipment I had that would have to be moved (special printer, modem, two computers, two file cabinets, my books.  I stayed where I was.

Unlike you, Evil Coworker (ECW) coveted my spot so she got Evil (Now Former) Supervisor (ENFS) to trade our cubicles (and she lied that she was the one that prompted this trade since it made absolutely no sense -- our cubicles were next to each other and shared a wall).  Because I was put in her old cubicle, the lighting was a lot stronger and was causing me physical difficulty (caused increasing pressure in my head).  So, I did what I was told (by another party) would be okay -- I contacted maintenance to reduce the lighting above my cubicle.  When maintenance showed up to do so, ECW had a major cow on the floor then, as always, ENFS came out and started berating me right in front of the maintenance guy (also a hospital employee so someone who could file an internal complaint regarding what took place).  Nice Coworker (who, I didn't know, had been witnessing the harassment and bullying of me since day one of my employment) finally had enough, went to our department director and not only told him what happened but how long it had been happening (which finally confirmed my complaint 1.5 years prior that ENFS was harassing me -- he lied when confronted and I couldn't prove it so, except for a few months of peace, he went back to what he was doing as it brought pleasure to ECW).

Anyway, happy ending, since I finally had someone who could corroborate my story, I knew I could go in with power behind my complaint, insisted that ENFS be removed as my supervisor since he had proven he could not be trusted to be an impartial supervisor and I got moved to the other end of the office.  Life has been much better for over 1.5 years now, and that has chapped ECW's hide even more.  All this took place just because she had to try to stick it to me yet again and take my cubicle (and given that my area had to decide among them who would be my supervisor, the entire office knows what those two had been doing for 2.5 years).

BTW -- if someone here is wondering why NCW (and others around us who I didn't realize could hear everything) didn't step up and say something sooner -- I really don't know.  It never occurred to me when I first complained that there were any witnesses to what was going on, and I can't/won't fault them for not getting involved (and, since I didn't talk to any of them about what was going on, they might've wondered why in the world I was putting up with it).  I think it was when I got berated in front of someone from an outside department, thus making OUR department look horrible, that it was the last straw for NCW.

[flowersintheattic]

I find it funny that none of the items on the list are really a problem in my office. No one makes popcorn, no one complains about strong smells, and most people eat at their desk. The receptionist is the one who washes the dishes at the end of the day, but issues can arise when she's not in.

The main thing that causes problems at my work is the use of speaker phones. We're an office share - three separate law firms in the same office suite. Myself and two co-workers have offices in a hallway the opposite direction from the rest of the offices, and the walls in our area are very thin. The three offices are in a row, with my firm's paralegal the first one you hit, then mine, then an attorney from another firm. For awhile, she'd use the speaker phone constantly. On what seemed to be a very loud volume (it sounded loud in my office, but wasn't as loud in the hallway, though it was loud enough that our paralegal could overhear), for long periods of time. She's stopped doing it now, thankfully.

[HorseFreak]

At my workplace the shared fridge is a major issue. One person likes to take it upon herself to remove or throw away EVERYTHING inside without notice, usually on a Friday afternoon. I have witnesses that saw her eating my lunch that I left for the next Monday since I had gone out for lunch Friday. I label everything with my name and it doesn't matter, she just trashes it.